I am currently the Director of the Environmental Studies Program and Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. My research focuses on the use of evolutionary theory to generate explanations about human cultural change as measured in the archaeological record. I believe that building falsifiable explanations of our shared history is a critical challenge for the social sciences and that our ability to accomplish this is task vital to our future. My perspective on archaeology and the historical science is lodged in evolutionary biology with appropriate additions to account for the phenomenon of cultural transmission.

My recent studies include the development of theoretical models and the construction of methods for studying patterns of change caused by cultural transmission and the process of natural selection in cultural systems. In addition, I explore the set of conditions that lead groups of people to produce cultural monuments such as those found on Easter Island.

In addition, I have interests in remote sensing as a means of efficiently and non-destructively studying the archaeological record. This work includes the use of magnetometry, resistivity, conductivity, thermal imagery, photogrammetry, LiDAR and ground penetrating radar. My field research has taken me from the Mississippi river valley to Easter Island to California and coastal Guatemala.